Fulani pastoralists’ transformation process: a sustainable development approach in the Western Highlands of Cameroon

The Fulani pastoralists of the Western Highlands of Cameroon are a subgroup of the Fulbe, a wider pastoral group whose members are dispersed across Sub-Saharan Africa. They migrated and settled in the region in the early twentieth century at different times in migratory waves. Since arriving in the region, they have experienced different stages of transformation due to changing socioeconomic, political and ecological conditions influencing their nomadic lifestyle. The Fulani pastoralists have moved from a purely nomadic lifestyle that involved permanent seasonal migration with their herds and families to a semi-nomadic lifestyle involving return to their previous settlements at the end of each transhumance season, and they finally have adopted a more sedentary community lifestyle that involves only the seasonal movement of herdsmen and their cattle during dry periods. This pastoralist transformation process was motivated by the hospitality of native farming communities, the British colonial administration and postcolonial government of Cameroon, population growth and environmental degradation in the Western Highlands of grazing and cultivable land. This transformation has been beneficial to both pastoralists and native farming groups by improving local community development through increased agro-pastoral production and the realization of communal development projects in education and non-agro-pastoral economic activities. Several challenges have confronted this Fulani pastoralist transformation and its community development in the Western Highlands of Cameroon: landuse competition involving farmer–herder conflicts and inter-tribal wars; climate change, including rainfall variability; and environmental degradation including the disappearance of agro-pastoral lands. This paper, based on field research, investigates the various approaches, benefits and challenges involved in Fulani pastoralists’ settlement transformation in the Western Highlands of Cameroon.     

Constructing a policy and institutional framework for an ecosystem-based approach to managing the Lower Amazon floodplain

A regional experiment in co-management is underway in the Lower Amazon that is developing the basic policy and institutional elements for an ecosystem-based approach to floodplain management. This initiative grew out of the grassroots movement of floodplain communities who, concerned with excessive commercial fishing pressure on local fisheries, took control of local lakes and implemented collective agreements regulating fishing activity. This paper describes the main elements of the evolving regional management system. This process has focused on four main dimensions of floodplain settlement and resource use: development of sustainable management systems for floodplain resources, policies and institutions for fisheries co-management, collective agreements for grazing cattle on floodplain grasslands, and a land tenure policy consistent with the objectives of the evolving co-management system. Over the last year INCRA, the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform, has begun implementation of a comprehensive new land tenure policy that could resolve structural deficiencies in the existing co-management system and provide the basis for the ecosystem-based management of the Lower Amazon floodplain. Readers should send their comments on this paper to: BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue.     

Homophily and Agency: Creating Effective Sustainable Development Networks

Community networks are self-organized groupings that form for many different reasons. Some networks, connected mainly through bonding ties, are based on personal interests and relationships; others, based mainly on bridging ties, centre around broader interests. These networks form to create collective agency for engaging with social, environmental, and other issues through the concentration of social capital. The multi-scaled and evolutionary nature of sustainable development issues requires that community groups dedicated to engaging with such issues be particularly diverse, resilient, and flexible. As such, they must build a large number of bridging ties leading to external resources and limit the potential for bonding ties to impose constraining norms upon the group. Over time, however, volunteer groups tend towards a state of homophily, the tendency of groups to form from similar actors and then become more similar with time. This tendency leads to a decrease in the number of the bridging ties that help to provide group agency. Homophily must be actively recognized within community sustainable development groups if they are to remain effective over the long term. This paper suggests methods to prevent and control group homophily drawn from experience in forming small, time-limited sustainable development networks. Readers should send their comments on this paper to: BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue     

Human use and conservation planning in Alpine areas of Northwestern Yunnan,China

Alpine areas in northwestern Yunnan, China possess globally significant levels of biodiversity and are important locally for livelihood activities such as livestock grazing and medicinal plant collection. Because local land use has important impacts on alpine conditions and communities have significant capacity to manage alpine resources, we emphasized local collaboration during the initial stages of conservation planning. Our collaboration with local communities investigated how livelihood strategies affect the condition of alpine resources in northwestern Yunnan and how future conservation efforts can be compatible with local livelihoods. We sampled three livestock herding sites, each within a different alpine sub-region, using open-ended interviews and maximum variation sampling. According to interviewees, livestock grazing within the alpine zone currently does not appear to be negatively impacting the availability of forage. Medicinal plant collection, however, is showing unsustainable trends. Tourism is as yet a nascent industry, but is seen as having great potential by those interviewed. It is clear that with increases in population, access to regional markets, and tourism, northwestern Yunnan’s rich alpine resources will require careful management. In addition to the data collected, we found that the methodology used may be widely applicable to organizations with limited resources that wish to engage local communities during the formative stages of regional-level conservation planning.     

农村集体建设用地流转问题分析

研究目的,分析农村集体建设用地流转中存在的问题,并分析导致原因,为完善集体建设用地市场提供建议。研究方法:文献资料法,归纳法。研究结果:集体建设用地流转中主要存在市场化受限,违法现象突出和利益分配不合理等问题,造成这些问题的原因是价格机制、信息不充分和现行法律法规不完善。     

Sri Lanka: a political ecology of socio-environmental conflicts and development projects

By analyzing 26 cases in the EJ Atlas for Sri Lanka, their causes, the impacts, the social actors involved, the forms of mobilization, and the main outcomes of the conflicts, this article examines in what ways activities aiming at economic growth produce socio-environmental conflicts. Such activities increase the social metabolism causing changes that translate into environmental, social, and health impacts which due to inequality of power are unequally distributed. As a result, those who are negatively impacted sometimes mobilize claiming environmental justice. The mining of construction materials to support the boom in the building sector and the expansion of intensive plantations into ‘extraction frontiers’ in new territories, cause deforestation, biodiversity loss, and hurt the local communities. Tourism and industries and new infrastructures are causing displacement, pollution, land degradation, and water shortage, affecting communities of farmers and fishermen that mobilize against the adverse impacts. Those with power to appropriate the natural resources are mostly the state together with international finance institutions and international actors who are able to implement the construction of infrastructures, plantations, and mass tourism. Mobilizations are mostly geared to the protection of livelihoods threatened by loss of access to land, pollution, deforestation, diseases, water scarcity, and new uncertain risks. The protection of the environment demanded by the mobilized groups in Sri Lanka does not aim just to protect nature itself but belongs to a wider movement of an “environmentalism of the poor”.     

Does community resilience decrease social–ecological vulnerability? Adaptation pathways trade-off in the Bolivian Altiplano

Worsening climate change impacts and environmental degradation are increasingly supporting policies and plans in framing a linear understanding of resilience building and vulnerability reduction. However, adaptations to different but interacting drivers of change are unclear in the mix of opportunities and threats related to increasing connections, emerging technologies, new patterns of dependency and possible lock-in effects. This paper discusses a more open-ended understanding of the relationship between resilience and vulnerability, highlighting emerging trade-offs among adaptive capacities and exposures to different (and new) threats as they relate to social–ecological sustainability. The transition of the Southern Bolivian Altiplano, from being a remote rural area of subsistence farming to a global leader in quinoa production and exportation, has been taken as a study case. Results from 18 workshops organised within different communities provide insights about a range of trade-offs between community resilience attributes and social–ecological vulnerability induced from land use changes, livestock strategies, communities’ behavioural change and institutions’ emerging policies. The main theoretical advances of the paper relate to the need for critically framing multiple threat exposures and adaptive capacity trade-offs, contributing to arguing the usually positive meaning of resilience, and taking into account “to whom or to what is positive which adaptation” and “which trade-off should be accepted, and why”. Framing adaptive pathways through these questions would serve as a tool for addressing sustainable development goals, while avoiding lock-ins or unsustainable path dependencies.     

“三权分置”下农地细碎化治理的社会路径及其效果、效益分析——基于“沙洋模式”的考察

基于湖北省沙洋县农地细碎化治理经验，分析了在“三权分置”改革背景下，开展农地细碎化治理的社会路径及其效果、效益。研究结果显示：（1）农民对农地细碎化治理的需求较强，“三权分置”改革可以增强农民的土地获得感和土地调整能力，使他们既作为农地细碎化治理结果的“受益者”，又作为农地细碎化治理过程的“主导者”；（2）借助“承包权”和“经营权”的分离，稳定农户的“承包权”，调整细碎耕地的“经营权”，使“承包者”与“经营者”都可以获取合理的产权预期；（3）地方政府和村集体在土地调整过程中发挥着协调与整合的重要作用，它们通过如理性计算与长远规划等具有地方特色的策略，能够有效提高农地细碎化治理的执行效率。研究发现：农地细碎化治理的社会路径可以实现较好的治理效果，并具有显著的经济效益和社会效益，有助于维护农村的社会稳定与可持续发展。研究建议：伴随农地确权工作进程，当前是实现农地细碎化治理的较好契机。全国其它地区可以结合村庄实际、地方资源与农民需求，选择诸如“经营权”流转、互换等多种适宜的土地调整形式，有效破解农地细碎化困境，进一步提高我国农地资源配置效率。     

A conceptual framework for analyzing deltas as coupled social–ecological systems: an example from the Amazon River Delta

At the nexus of watersheds, land, coastal areas, oceans, and human settlements, river delta regions pose specific challenges to environmental governance and sustainability. Using the Amazon Estuary-Delta region (AD) as our focus, we reflect on the challenges created by the high degree of functional interdependencies shaping social–ecological dynamics of delta regions. The article introduces the initial design of a conceptual framework to analyze delta regions as coupled social–ecological systems (SES). The first part of the framework is used to define a delta SES according to a problem and/or collective action dilemma. Five components can be used to define a delta SES: social–economic systems, governance systems, ecosystems-resource systems, topographic-hydrological systems, and oceanic-climate systems. These components are used in association with six types of telecoupling conditions: socio-demographic, economic, governance, ecological, material, and climatic-hydrological. The second part of the framework presents a strategy for the analysis of collective action problems in delta regions, from sub-delta/local to delta to basin levels. This framework is intended to support both case studies and comparative analysis. The article provides illustrative applications of the framework to the AD. First, we apply the framework to define and characterize the AD as coupled SES. We then utilize the framework to diagnose an example of collective action problem related to the impacts of urban growth, and urban and industrial pollution on small-scale fishing resources. We argue that the functional interdependencies characteristic of delta regions require new approaches to understand, diagnose, and evaluate the current and future impacts of social–ecological changes and potential solutions to the sustainability dilemmas of delta regions.     

Multi-objective Programming and Social Welfare Analysis of Rural–urban Land Conversion Decision-making

Abstract

Rural–urban land conversion is an inevitable phenomenon in urbanization and industrialization. And the decision-making issue about this conversion is multi-objective because the social decision maker (the whole of central government and local authority) has to integrate the requirements of different interest groups (rural collective economic organizations, peasants, urban land users and the ones affected indirectly) and harmonize the sub-objects (economic, social and ecological outcomes) of this land allocation process. This paper established a multi-objective programming model for rural–urban land conversion decision-making and made some social welfare analysis correspondingly. Result shows that the general object of rural–urban land conversion decision-making is to reach the optimal level of social welfare in a certain state of resources allocation, while the preference of social decision makers and the value judgment of interest groups are two crucial factors which determine the realization of the rural–urban land conversion decision-making objects.     

需求侧视角下农村集体建设用地市场效率及影响因素研究

利用广东省南海区农村集体建设用地市场需求侧398份调研数据，采用两阶段DEA模型测算农村集体建设用地市场效率，探析交易费用、资产专用性、交易的不确定性等因素对农村集体建设用地市场效率的影响。研究结果表明：（1）需求侧农村集体建设用地市场总体效率为0.230，纯技术效率为0.390，规模效率为0.658。市场规模报酬绝大多数处于规模报酬递增阶段，可通过吸引更多社会资本参与新农村建设，助推城镇化以及城市升级。(2)交易费用对市场效率没有显著影响，与市场中的企业多次转租行为有关。（3）资产专用性：交易主体方面，企业高技能水平人员有助于提高农村集体建设用地市场效率。交易客体方面，在均衡处，集聚地区更高的要素价格意味着更好的生产要素匹配，农村集体建设用地市场效率较高。（4）交易不确定性：交易行为方面，在企业生命周期与土地利用周期更匹配的情况下，企业将选择加大生产投入以优化市场资源配置水平。交易环境方面，价格决定方式显著影响市场效率，交易环境的不确定性越低，越有利于提高需求方对于农村集体用地市场的预期，提高市场效率。因此，农村集体建设用地市场改革可以通过推进农村集体土地空间归并与整治，降低细碎化程度。同时，应构建农村集体建设用地一级市场和二级市场交易体系，以提高需求侧农村集体建设用地市场效率。     

怒江云南北段的村域土地利用及驱动力分析

驱动力分析是土地利用研究的重要内容。选择怒江流域北段高黎贡山自然保护区周边4个自然村为研究对象，应用高分辨率SPOT 5遥感影像数据，结合实地逐块核实，对土地利用/覆被进行分类，并建立土地利用类型分类系统，用Fragstats 33分析得到村域土地利用格局和特征；同时，采用入户调查、半结构访谈和问卷调查等方法，获得的村域详细社会经济数据，建立土地利用与社会经济之间的关联，分析村域土地利用的驱动力。结果显示：村域土地利用主要受自然条件、受教育程度、生活习俗等因子的驱动，且经济收入主要依赖于粗放的土地利用。研究结果能为怒江云南北段的土地资源合理利用和村域经济发展提供数据支持；研究方法可作为局域尺度土地利用研究的参考     

资本禀赋对生态保护红线区农户人为活动限制受偿意愿的影响

生态补偿是激励生态保护红线区农户主动参与人为活动限制政策,实现生态保护红线区人与自然和谐共生的有效政策工具。为深入了解生态保护红线区农户人为活动限制的受偿意愿,将其决策过程分解成补偿参与意愿和受偿额度两个阶段,基于布迪厄的社会实践理论,构建资本禀赋与受偿意愿的理论分析框架,利用江西省和湖北省4个县(区)生态保护红线区微观调查数据,运用双栏模型实证分析资本禀赋对生态保护红线区农户人为活动限制受偿意愿的影响。研究结果表明:(1)有效的人为活动限制补偿激励应不低于农户的平均受偿意愿,对应调查区域的补偿标准应不低于0.23万元/(户·a);(2)经济资本对人为活动限制补偿参与意愿和受偿额度均有显著的正向影响,其中农业收入比重、人口负担比和住房结构对补偿参与意愿具有正向影响,劳动力数量和人均耕地面积对受偿额度具有正向影响;(3)文化资本对人为活动限制补偿参与意愿的影响不确定,但对受偿额度有显著的负向影响,其中村集体活动参与对补偿参与意愿具有正向影响,外出打工经历对补偿参与意愿和受偿额度均有负向影响;(4)社会资本对人为活动限制补偿参与意愿有显著的正向影响,但对受偿额度的影响不确定,其中村干部信任程度和陌生人信任程度对补偿参与意愿具有正向影响,邻居信任程度和贷款难易程度对受偿额度具有负向影响,手机联系人数和社会声望对受偿额度具有正向影响。因此,在未来的生态保护红线区生态补偿机制设计中,要分层分阶段推进人为活动限制补偿政策,充分重视农户的经济资本、文化资本和社会资本对其人为活动限制受偿意愿的影响。     

An experiment in strengthening the networks of remote communities in the face of environmental change: leveraging spatially distributed environmental memory

Agrarian communities in different regions develop diverse coping strategies to address the environmental changes they face. In this work, we test how to stimulate farmers’ social learning across diverse regions to promote informed responses to soil degradation. We invited 117 randomly selected members of 16 randomly selected Sumatran communities to three 3-day networking and training events in regions with diverse socio-environmental histories. One event was held in the respondents’ remote rural district (Tanggamus), the second was held in a more densely populated region on Sumatra Island (Kalianda), and the third was held in a heavily populated region on Java Island (Garut and Ciamis). Eighteen months later, we surveyed the information-sharing networks and agricultural practices of 370 members of these communities. The participants had become popular sources of agricultural advice, but the strength of this impact depended on the region in which their networking intervention was conducted. The participants in the event on Java had become the most central members of their communities. Although all the participants received the same formal information, those who interacted with the farmers in a region with the longest history of population pressure and land degradation management were more likely to adopt the recommended practices. The participants in this intervention doubled their odds of adopting organic fertilizers compared with those who networked only with peers in their local environment. Environmental memory of coping with change can be shared between regions through social learning, which can be stimulated by simple interventions.

     

Rural organizations and adaptation to climate change and variability in rural Kenya

Numerous studies have shown that collective action affects the type and efficiency of short- and long-term adaptation to climate change. This empirical study contributes to the body of the literature on collective action and adaptive capacity by demonstrating how organizations frame responses to climate variability and change in rural Kenya by promoting local rural institutions. By analyzing interviews, role-playing games, and household surveys, we ask how local rural organizations shape coping strategies to climate variability and how they may structure future adaptations to climate change. We also investigate what types of households participate in those organizations and how their participation may impact their vulnerability to climate change and variability. Our analysis shows that in places rendered especially vulnerable to climate change by arid climatic conditions, the disengagement of governmental services, and a limited access to income-generating activities, local rural organizations increase livelihood security. Those organizations reduce local vulnerabilities and enhance collective action. In contrast to common diversification and livelihood security strategies which rely on the access to urban or peri-urban structures, local rural institutions and organizations allow for rural and grassroots sustainable adaptation strategies. In that respect, they constitute a resilient and mostly untapped resource for visibly strengthening livelihood security and adaptive capacities in rural Kenya.     

水库移民安置区土地补偿现状与补偿原理

随着农村土地制度的变化,安置区土地补偿问题对于协调水库移民安置中各相关主体之间的利益平衡具有重要的意义。本文基于实地调查,首先分析了水库移民安置区土地补偿的现状和存在的问题;其次,运用土地产权理论和福利经济理论,从安置区土地补偿的原因、范围和补偿原则等方面阐明了安置区土地补偿的基本原理;最后,在此基础上提出了完善相关法律法规、协调水利水电工程建设中利益相关者的关系和利益平衡、体现农地价值等政策建议。结果表明:其一,安置区的土地补偿,无论从现行法律、还是从实际获得的补偿来看,均未体现对安置区土地权益的保护;其二,安置区集体和居民理应获得相应的权益补偿,其补偿范围既包括转出土地使用权的补偿,也包括对共同拥有土地所有权带来的权益分配变化的补偿;其三,土地制度的建设和改进上,应依据安置区土地资源状况和调出土地的状况确定补偿标准,淹没区集体、移民和安置区集体、居民应获得同等补偿,并力求体现农地价值。     

Multi-objective Programming and Social Welfare Analysis of Rural-urban Land Conversion Decision-making

Rural-urban land conversion is an inevitable phenomenon in urbanization and industrialization. And the decision-making issue about this conversion is multi-objective because the social decision maker (the whole of central government and local authority) has to integrate the requirements of different interest groups (rural collective economic organizations, peasants, urban land users and the ones affected indirectly) and harmonize the sub-objects (economic, social and ecological outcomes) of this land allocation process. This paper established a multi-objective programming model for rural-urban land conversion decision-making and made some social welfare analysis correspondingly. Result shows that the general object of rural-urban land conversion decision-making is to reach the optimal level of social welfare in a certain state of resources allocation, while the preference of social decision makers and the value judgment of interest groups are two crucial factors which determine the realization of the rural-urban land conversion decision-making objects.     

Can Science Writing Collectives Overcome Barriers to More Democratic Communication and Collaboration? Lessons from Environmental Communication Praxis in Southern Appalachia

Despite compelling reasons to involve nonscientists in the production of ecological knowledge, cultural and institutional factors often dis-incentivize engagement between scientists and nonscientists. This paper details our efforts to develop a biweekly newspaper column to increase communication between ecological scientists, social scientists, and the communities within which they work. Addressing community-generated topics and written by a collective of social and natural scientists, the column is meant to foster public dialog about socio-environmental issues and to lay the groundwork for the coproduction of environmental knowledge. Our collective approach to writing addresses some major barriers to public engagement by scientists, but the need to insert ourselves as intermediaries limits these gains. Overall, our efforts at environmental communication praxis have not generated significant public debate, but they have supported future coproduction by making scientists a more visible presence in the community and providing easy pathways for them to begin engaging the public. Finally, this research highlights an underappreciated barrier to public engagement: scientists are not merely disconnected from the public, but also connected in ways that may be functional for their research. Many field scientists, for example, seek out neutral and narrowly defined connections that permit research access but are largely incompatible with efforts to address controversial issues of environmental governance.     

资本禀赋与农户耕地保护支付意愿关系 ——基于城镇近郊区与城镇远郊区的对比分析

在对资本禀赋与农户耕地保护支付意愿的关系进行文献综述并提出研究假说的基础上，基于武汉“1+8”城市圈483份农户调研数据，利用order logistic模型，实证检验两者之间的关系。结果表明：（1）有33.5%的农户愿意每月支付20元左右资金来保护耕地，整体水平偏低；城镇远郊区农户有更强的耕地生计依赖，相比于城镇近郊区，支付意愿更强。（2）从各个模型中的显著型变量来看，除经济资本中的家庭年总收入外，其余资本禀赋对耕地保护支付意愿存在显著正向影响。（3）整体上，相比于经济和文化资本，社会资本对农户耕地保护支付意愿的影响效应更强。（4）城镇近郊区和城镇远郊区农户资本禀赋对耕地保护支付意愿影响存在显著差异：相比城镇远郊区，除与亲朋邻里关系状况外，城镇近郊区其余农户资本影响效应较大；进一步分析发现，经济资本中的家庭年总收入、家庭劳动力总人数以及社会资本中在群众会议中的发言情况只对城镇近郊区农户影响效应显著；对村集体信任程度等村庄型和与亲朋邻里关系程度邻里型社会资本都对城镇远郊区农户耕地保护支付意愿产生重要影响，而城镇近郊区仅是与亲朋邻里关系程度邻里型社会资本产生效应。应积极组建各类农村合作经济组织，提升农户储蓄水平；大力发展农村教育，尤其是职业教育和继续教育；鼓励农民积极参与农村社会集体活动组织以加强农户之间、农户与村干部之间的交流；尤其加强城镇远郊区农村集体组织建设等来加强农户资本禀赋积累；进一步加强农户农业生产补贴；以此增强农户耕地保护支付意愿，促进更好的保护耕地。